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Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) who served as a Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq during George W. Bush’s first term. An outspoken and controversial proponent of hawkish U.S. foreign policies, Rubin is closely associated with neoconservativism. His track record includes working for a number of rightwing Israel-centric groups (including AEI, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Middle East Forum), championing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, suggesting assassinating foreign leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reportedly misrepresenting translations of statements by Iranian officials,[1] working at the heavily criticized Pentagon Office of Special Plans (OSP), and consulting for the Lincoln Group, a PR firm accused of planting propaganda in the Iraqi press.

According to Rubin’s AEI bio, his “major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society. He also writes frequently on transformative diplomacy and governance issues.”[2]

Since the election of Barack Obama, Rubin has proved a relentless critic of the president in op-eds published in rightist outlets like the National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. In a November 6, 2009 op-ed, Rubin joined a chorus of conservative writers like Newt Gingrich in lambasting Obama for not attending ceremonies celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall, making the outlandish claim that this was a sign of “American isolation and weakness.” He wrote, “Pres. Barack Obama's decision not to celebrate one of the seminal events of the 20th century … [is] replete with symbolism. … I'm afraid that Obama does not understand how important his refusal to attend commemoration events will be, not only to those still suffering under the yoke of oppression, but also to adversaries who see American isolation and weakness as a phenomenon to be exploited.”[3]

Rubin has repeatedly chastised Obama on Iran policy. In an October 2009 op-ed, Rubin charged that Obama’s insistence on pursuing a diplomatic process in the context of the P5+1 group of states would not halt Iran’s nuclear program, and would ultimately “leave Israel with no choice” but to attack Iran’s nuclear sites.[4]

Rubin also blasted Obama for his decision to extend constitutional rights to suspected terrorists and try their cases in civilian courts, making the legally dubious argument that the Geneva Conventions do not “fully apply”—this despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled against the George W. Bush administration’s argument that the conventions do not apply to so-called unlawful combatants.[5] Rubin opined, nevertheless, that Obama’s decision “undermined national security and eroded the foundation of human rights law.”[6]

On Iran

Rubin has been a leading hawk on Iran policy, sometimes overzealously. In early 2009, for example, several commentators—including Paul Kerr, an arms control expert, and Farideh Farhi, an Iranian scholar—accused Rubin of providing misleading translations of comments from Iranian officials in an effort to push his anti-Iran agenda.[7] In one case, in a National Review blog entry criticizing New York Times writer Roger Cohen, Rubin wrote: "One of Cohen’s interlocutors, at least according to his February 5, 2009 column, was former IRGC Chief Mohsen Rezai. Here is Rezai in today’s Iranian press: ‘Our enmity with the U.S. has no end.’ Cohen painted him as a bit more reasonable." However, according to Farhi, “Rezai in fact said exactly the opposite, using a double negative. He said: ‘Our enmity with the U.S. is not without end.’”[8]

Responding to the accusations, Rubin dismissed Fahri, “a sometimes-academic and activist with the National Iranian American Council,” as simply “dishonest,” arguing that she “cherry picks and removes quotations from immediate context.” However, Rubin did not directly address Farhi’s criticism of the Rezai quotation.[9]

Commenting on the affair, Jim Lobe of the Inter Press Service, wrote, “Now, polemics is one thing; simple translation errors are yet another; but deliberate misrepresentation is quite something else, and that’s what Farhi suggests may be going on. Not that that would be particularly surprising. After all, Rubin not only is a protégé of Richard Perle, who recently denied the existence of neoconservatism or that it had the slightest impact on Bush’s foreign policy; he also worked with the notorious OSP. … On the other hand, Rubin is a stickler for accuracy when it comes to what other writers report about him, myself included, so you would expect him to exercise great care in his own writings and translations.”[10]

In 2008, Rubin was the lead drafter of a report entitled Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development, which was published by a study group convened by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), a group led by several former government officials. Other participants in the study group included Dennis Ross; Henry Sokolski; Michael Makovsky, a former aide to Douglas Feith in the Donald Rumsfeld Pentagon; Stephen Rademaker, the husband of AEI’s Danielle Pletka who worked under John Bolton in the State Department; and Kenneth Weinstein, CEO of the Hudson Institute.[11]

Called by one commentator a “roadmap to war,”[12] the report argues that despite Iran’s assurances to the contrary, its nuclear program aims to develop nuclear weapons and is thus a threat to “U.S. and global security, regional stability, and the international nonproliferation regime,” a conclusion that stands in stark contrast to the CIA’s November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which found that Iran had put on hold its efforts to develop nuclear warheads. In contrast to many realist assessments, the report contends that “Cold War deterrence” is not persuasive in the context of Iran’s program, due largely to the “Islamic Republic’s extremist ideology.” Thus, even a peaceful uranium enrichment program would place the entire Middle East region “under a cloud of ambiguity given uncertain Iranian capacities and intentions.”[13]

The report advises that the new U.S. president bolster the country’s military presence in the Middle East, which would include “pre-positioning additional U.S. and allied forces, deploying additional aircraft carrier battle groups and minesweepers, emplacing other war material in the region, including additional missile defense batteries. In addition, the new administration should suspend bilateral cooperation with Russia on nuclear issues to pressure it to stop providing assistance to Iran’s nuclear, missile, and weapons programs.” And, if the Obama administration agrees to hold direct talks with Tehran without insisting that Iran first cease enrichment activities, the U.S. should set a pre-determined compliance deadline and be prepared to apply increasingly harsh repercussions if deadlines are not met, leading ultimately to U.S. military strikes that would “have to target not only Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but also its conventional military infrastructure in order to suppress an Iranian response.”[14]

In effect, according to the BPC report, if Iran does not permanently abandon uranium enrichment on its own territory, a position is has rejected outright, than war is almost certainly unavoidable. The only rationale for intermediate steps, such as direct talks, would be to give the United States the chance to build support for eventual military action.[15]

Earlier, during a March 2007 speech at the University of Haifa, Rubin argued that "U.S. and Iranian interests in Iraq are diametrically opposed, and will continue to be until one side wins and the other loses."[16]

Rubin has suggested that one way to avoid war would be to assassinate Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In an August 28, 2006 National Review article, Rubin wrote: "If a single bullet or bomb could forestall a far bloodier application of force, would it not be irresponsible to fail to consider that option—especially when the leaders of both Iran and North Korea threaten to use nuclear weapons and call for the destruction of both regional democracies and the United States?"[17]

Trajectory

Like many of his neoconservative colleagues, Rubin's political trajectory originated on the left. Highlighting his liberal background in a National Review Online interview, Rubin said: "I'm not just at AEI, neocon, Zionist conspiracy central, but I was also Quaker-educated for 14 years and spent one summer interning for a Democrat on Capitol Hill funded by a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation summer fellowship. Let Mother Jones go nuts with that wire diagram."[18]

Before joining the Bush administration in 2002 as a Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq policy, Rubin was a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and visiting fellow a the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations. He also lectured at  Yale University, the Hebrew University, and Sulaymani University in Iraqi Kurdistan.

According to retired Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who in 2002 and 2003 briefly worked in the Pentagon's directorate for Near East and South Asian Affairs (NESA), an office overseen by William Luti and whose Iraq section eventually became the Office of Special Plans, Rubin was one of several researchers from the WINEP and other like-minded think tanks who were brought in to staff the Iraq desk. When she volunteered to take  the NESA job, writes Kwiatkowski, she "didn't realize that the expertise on Middle East policy was not only being removed, but was also being exchanged for that from various agenda-bearing think tanks, including the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Interestingly, the office director billet stayed vacant the whole time I was there. That vacancy and the long-term absence of real regional understanding to inform defense policymakers in the Pentagon explains a great deal about the neoconservative approach on the Middle East and the disastrous mistakes made in Washington and in Iraq.”[19]

Gregory Djerejian sums up Rubin’s work for the Bush administration, which also included serving briefly as a political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority: “Rubin was part of a group associated with Doug Feith at the Pentagon that were, in the main, [Ahmed] Chalabi-cheerleaders, and swallowed with alacrity the kool-aid that the ‘liberation’ would be swift and welcomed by the Iraqis and that the U.S. government would be able to hand off the governance quickly and without much pain to Chalabi and Co. Putting it plainly then, and I hope I’m not hurting anyone’s feelings here, Rubin had a significant responsibility for the strategic and operational decisions made after the invasion. In effect he could well be called to task for this major U.S. policy failure and all the tragic mess our government and nation is now facing with so much blood and treasure spilled.”[20]

After his government service, Rubin returned to the neoconservative think tank community. He became a fellow at AEI and the editor of Middle East Quarterly, which is co-published by the Middle East Forum and the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon. Commenting on Rubin’s transition, Laura Rozen wrote that "like [Michael] Ledeen, Rubin straddles the worlds of government consulting, academic-think tank-dom, and journalism-advocacy on behalf of neocon causes. ... It will be interesting to see where Rubin's combination of consulting for neocon officials at the Pentagon, and advocacy on behalf of their pet causes at AEI and in the New Republic and other media, will lead him. He certainly seems to be being carefully groomed for something special over at AEI."[21]

During Bush’s second term, Rubin joined many of his AEI colleagues—including Michael Ledeen and Danielle Pletka—in criticizing the administration for straying from its hardline militarist tack as the Iraq War began unraveling. In an interview with Time magazine, for example, Rubin argued that efforts to negotiate with Iran would simply bolster the regime's position: "The very act of sitting down with them recognizes them.”[22]

In an August 7, 2007 editorial, Rubin criticized the Bush administration’s stance on Turkey. He charged that the administration had "flip-flopped" in its dealings with a Kurdish "terrorist" group.  He wrote: "President George W. Bush's failure to uphold an assurance to Turkish officials that the United States would take action against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a terrorist group, is merely the latest in a series of broken promises. Bush has backtracked on both the philosophical underpinnings of his foreign policy as well as individual promises to specific nations and world leaders. The president's record of broken promises will haunt future administrations and mar Bush's foreign policy legacy."[23]

Misleading

In addition to accusations that he has misrepresented translations from Farsi,[24] Rubin has a track record of misleading claims.

In a May 2004 article titled "You Must be Likud!" published by National Review Online, Rubin suggested that all criticism of neoconservatives boils down to "creeping anti-Semitism,” which he claimed had “infected” mainstream discourse. Linking patently racist figures like Louis Farrakhan with respected Middle East scholar Juan Cole, Rubin wrote, “That racists, anti-Semites, and other hate-mongers substitute threats for discourse is not new. … What is new, however, is the infection of mainstream discourse with anti-Semitic references.”[25]

An example of this trend, according to Rubin, is the “ease with which the questioning of Jewish officials' motivations has infiltrated some in the academic community.” As an example Rubin cited Juan Cole, who writes Rubin “has accused several Bush administration employees of having ‘strong ties to the Likud.’”[26] Rubin’s indignation notwithstanding, his criticism of Cole ignores the incontestable fact that many Bush administration officials had long-standing ties with Likud figures. Furthermore, contrary to Rubin’s insinuation, Cole was not claiming that any official’s motivations or views were a result of his/her Jewish heritage.

Rubin also cited with approval Max Boot's observation: "If neocons were agents of Likud, they would have advocated an invasion not of Iraq or Afghanistan but of Iran, which Israel considers to be the biggest threat to its security."[27] However, this claim—which overstates the more modest contention that officials simply had connections to Likud—conveniently ignores the abundant evidence that many Likud figures had long pushed attacking Iraq. A key example of this was the 1996 study group organized by the Likud-affiliated Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, which produced a report aimed at shaping the policies of the then-incoming Likud-led government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," the June 1996 report urged Israel to break off then-ongoing peace initiatives, and suggested strategies for reshaping the Middle East, including "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq" and working closely with Turkey and Jordan “to contain, destabilize, and roll back" regional threats and using "Israeli proxy forces" in Lebanon for "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon." Study participants included several subsequent Bush administration officials, including Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and David Wurmser.

In April 2006 Rubin and several over prominent neoconservatives participated in a smear campaign against Juan Cole, who was being considered for a tenured position at Yale, Rubin's alma mater. Writing in the Yale Daily News, Rubin again hinted that Cole's analysis of the Middle East might be skewed by antisemitism. "While Cole condemns anti-Semitism," wrote Rubin, "he accuses prominent Jewish-American officials of having dual loyalties, a frequent anti-Semitic refrain. That he accuses Jewish Americans of using 'the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment' is unfortunate.”[28] On June 1, 2006, Yale's Senior Appointments Committee announced that it had rejected Cole's nomination, although three other committees had already accepted it. Several observers were convinced that the rejection was a direct result of the accusations against Cole. "I'm saddened and distressed by the news," said John Merriman, a Yale history professor. "I love this place. But I haven't seen something like this happen at Yale before. In this case, academic integrity clearly has been trumped by politics."[29]

Rubin's own reputation as a scholar took a hit in early 2006 when the New York Times revealed that he had reviewed propaganda articles produced by the Lincoln Group, a private PR firm hired by the Pentagon. According to the Times, the Lincoln Group "paid Iraqi newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers.”[30] A month earlier, when the Times asked Rubin about Lincoln's Pentagon contract, he said: "I'm not surprised this goes on. Informational operations are part of any military campaign. Especially in an atmosphere where terrorists and insurgents—replete with oil boom cash—do the same. We need an even playing field, but cannot fight with both hands tied behind our backs.”[31] What Rubin didn't mention to the Times reporter was that he had given the Lincoln Group feedback on its work. When the Times later questioned him about his role in the Lincoln affair, Rubin admitted: "I visited Camp Victory and looked over some of their proposals or products and commented on their ideas. I am not nor have I been an employee of the Lincoln Group. I do not receive a salary from them.”[32]